The present invention relates generally to systems and methods for transmitting signals in communication networks. More particularly, systems and methods for transmitting signals in sensor networks are provided.
Sensor networks are increasingly used as a cost effective technology for transmitting information within broadband sensor communication infrastructures. Sensor networks have been used in many applications such as environment monitoring and control. Many sensor networks use wireless/radio frequency (RF) transmission for communications and are referred to as Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN).
A wireless sensor network (WSN) is generally composed of one or more sinks (or base stations) and tens or thousands of sensor nodes scattered in a physical space. With the integration of information sensing, computation, and wireless communication capabilities, the sensor nodes can sense physical information, process the sensed information, and report the processed information to the sink. The sink can query information and even control the behavior of the sensor nodes. A WSN can be used to monitor events and collect data in some special environments where other networks are difficult or costly to be deployed. Other sensor networks include optical technology for communications and form Free-Space Optical Sensor Networks (FSOSN).